Unified communications has promised to revolutionize the work
culture as we have known it -- giving workers greater flexibility
and mobility. But a recent study has found that it has yet to live
up to all its promise to improve how we work.
A recent study commissioned by Dimension Data, a specialist IT
services and solutions provider, and conducted by Datamonitor, an
online database and analysis services provider, determined that
unified communications (UC), while continuing to be a global
industry driver, is still slow to inspire all the changes it is
purported to be driving.
The survey, which involved more than 500 workers and nearly 400
IT managers in various industries, was designed to investigate the
different elements and trends of the UC market. Workers and
managers were asked the same questions so that the survey could
evaluate the perceptions of those who use these technologies as
tools to perform their work against the perceptions of those who
implement and maintain them. The survey also specifically included
workers who use the computer for even just 10 hours a week.
UC implementation continues to be driven by workers, according
to the survey's findings. Most consumers maintain a high level of
connectivity and technology in their own homes and now expect that
same level in their work environment.
"Unified communications is involving more than desktop
applications now," said Mark Slaga, CTO for Dimension Data North
America.
@41580 Survey results indicated that while UC adoption is still
strong among U.S. companies, these same organizations are markedly
behind their European and Australian counterparts when it comes to
adopting and implementing flexible work environments, though they
already have in place the technologies that would allow greater
flexibility.
For example, the survey found that 75% of French companies and
73% of Swiss companies offer their workers a fully supported
flexible working environment, whereas only 55% of U.S. companies
said they offered a fully IT-supported flexible working environment
for their workers.
Dimension Data found that U.S. employees are less likely to have
a flexible working environment than their European counterparts,
despite U.S. organizations' leading the charge to implement UC.
"We wanted to determine if UC is the driving factor behind
adopting a flexible work environment -- if a need to develop a
flexible working environment was driving UC adoption or if it was a
need to raise productivity that was driving UC deployments," said
Datamonitor analyst Vuk Trifkovic.
The U.S. companies do lead actual UC implementations, but EU and
Swiss companies are more willing to offer their employees more
flexible working environments that are fully supported by the IT
department. One factor contributing to the results could be that
European laws require employers to be more flexible with their
employees' work hours, and companies have to show compliance with
these laws.
Though European companies are not implementing UC at the same
swift rate as their U.S. counterparts, they are developing and
encouraging greater flexibility in employee work options. In
addition, by providing greater flexibility for the sake of
compliance, most European companies also seem to believe that
offering a flexible work option improves worker productivity;
whereas in the U.S., the companies that do offer a flexible work
option tend to do so because they believe it increases employee
retention -- an important factor in light of the current
competitive market for workers.
But further results showed that U.S. companies also have reason
to be less accommodating to flexible work options because of a more
rigid regulatory framework and stricter employee practices --
offering flexible work options has less to do with UC adoption.
U.S. companies appear to be quite decisive and predominantly on one
or the other side of the spectrum -- either they offer a fully
IT-supported flexible work environment or they do not offer
employees any flex-work option.
"It is interesting to note that U.S. enterprises either offer
flexible work and full IT support, or they do not offer the option
of flexible working at all," Trifkovic said.
When U.S. companies do allow employees to take advantage of
their UC implementations and participate in a flexible work
environment, the majority cite employee retention as the chief
driving factor for that decision.
The study also noted that half of the respondents believe that
VoIP technology will be a routine technology in most corporate
environments within two years.